The Intruder

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CreditIllustration by Melinda Josie

By Ayesha Harruna Attah

Sept. 4, 2015

My friend Pierre recently bought a house in Popenguine, a small seaside town in Senegal. Determined to mold the house into more of his dream and less of its previous owner’s, he has gutted and remodeled its interior, broken up the pavement outside, replaced the wiring (after he was electrocuted in the shower) and even uprooted and transplanted full-grown trees.

When he learned a trip would pry him from his project for a week, he decided to cram in as much work as possible. Which is why one Wednesday, present in his house were: a mason cutting into stone; a carpenter building shelves; a plumber and his two apprentices fixing a leaky toilet; an electrician; and a computer expert installing Internet cables. It was impossible to keep track of who was who. I had gone over so his computer whiz could install software on my laptop.

Pierre went upstairs to show his carpenter where he wanted the shelves. I suddenly heard raised voices — the sound of a scuffle, replete with furniture being kicked aside — and wondered what Babacar, the quiet-looking carpenter, could have done to provoke Pierre’s ire. Outside I found Pierre wringing someone’s neck. Which workman was this? Had he stolen something?

‘‘Barke Serigne Touba,’’ said the man who had been apprehended, pointing an index finger skyward and swearing to his marabout, his patron spiritual guide.

As with any scuffle worth its salt, a crowd gathered. A small one, composed of the mason; the carpenter; Pierre’s watchman, Jean, who had just walked in; and me. The neat-looking young man continued to claim his innocence while name-dropping his marabout. His backpack contained shiny, patterned clothes wrapped in clear plastic. He was speaking in Wolof, Senegal’s lingua franca, so I sidled up to Jean for a translation.

‘‘He says he was selling clothes,’’ Jean said. ‘‘He came in through the front door, didn’t see anyone and went upstairs.’’

The young man’s story didn’t make sense. He would have encountered at least two people on his way up.

Pierre found nothing in the intruder’s bag. The young man looked up to me, perhaps hoping for some feminine sympathy. He rattled off a string of words. I have a very Senegalese look (thin and dark-skinned), I am told daily, but I am from Ghana. I didn’t understand a thing.

Suddenly, Pierre’s hand shot forward and struck the man’s face. The intruder pressed his front teeth and, satisfied that they hadn’t been dislodged, told Pierre not to hit him. Pierre, flexing his fist in pain, asked me what I thought. Now I was to be the voice of reason.

I told Pierre to stop hitting the man, but I was stuck. Pierre is a white Frenchman. The intruder was very Senegalese. I badly wanted our dynamics to be different, and found myself feeling sorry for the man, despite his shaky story.

Pierre said that he had been robbed too many times, and that twice he had encountered a thief in his house. The first time, after he let the person go, he saw that his car had been broken into. The next time, the person got away on a horse and chariot. I, too, had suffered recent robberies, so I knew that the feeling of being intruded upon was hard to recover from. And yet I wanted to tell Pierre, ‘‘Let him go.’’

‘‘I’m taking him to the gendarmerie,’’ Pierre decided. Babacar and Jean led the intruder to the gate. Another scuffle ensued when Pierre asked to see the intruder’s ID. The intruder just flashed his wallet at Pierre. Jean said he claimed his mother was sick and home alone. No one would look after her if he went to the gendarmerie, so he would not get into Pierre’s car.

Pierre said: ‘‘He has a lot of money on him. I don’t want to let him go and hear that he robbed the neighbors.’’

‘‘Maybe get a gendarme to come here,’’ I suggested, my heart knotting.

Pierre didn’t have the number, so he called Malik, a local restaurateur and the go-to person for all things bureaucratic. ‘‘You won’t believe this,’’ Pierre said. ‘‘Malik found him loitering in his garden, too. He let him go with a warning not to enter people’s homes uninvited.’’

That settled it. Malik came over. The gendarmes were called, and 20 minutes later, they carted off the intruder.

That evening, the conversation ranged from what would have happened if he’d been found in a more crowded place — he would have been beaten to a pulp — to whether firearms should be purchased, to which Pierre and I were the sole voices of dissent.

‘‘People in the village said he was just selling clothes,’’ another friend said much later. ‘‘He used to sell to the previous owner’s wife.’’

But when I asked if people in the village actually knew him, the answer was no.

Ayesha Harruna Attah, 31, was born in Ghana. She is the author of two novels, ‘‘Harmattan Rain,’’ a nominee for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and ‘‘Saturday’s Shadows,’’ which was shortlisted for the 2013 Kwani? Manuscript Project.

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